Irish Down Demons

The Men's basketball team took down DePaul 89-80 last night behind a strong Luke Harangody performance. When Notre Dame started the game off with absolutely frigid shooting, Bam Bam found a way to keep the Irish in the contest, scoring his team's first 9 points. Zeller then came off the bench to sink a 3 which seemed to warm up the rim for ND's other shooters; in a very well rounded night, 6 of Notre Dame's players scored more than 8 points. Hillesland and Ayers are continuing to play well in their new roles, scoring 10 and 9 points respectively, and additionally, both guards brought the house down with powerful dunks. Tory Jackson played well for the second game in a row, scoring 8 points on 4-9 shooting and coming up with 6 assists, 4 boards, and 4 steals. ND's other point guard rebounded from a sub-par performance against Providence to score 17 points, including some important 3s that opened up the game. The brightest star on the court, however, was Luke Harangody, who scored in doubled figures (29) for his 18th game in a row. Also pulling in 14 rebounds, Luke is putting forth a strong case to be considered for Big East Player of the Year.

The JACC promotional crew dished out some free stuff for the second week in a row; last night, everyone in attendance received a 'Black Out' shirt. DePaul apparently got the memo and sported some flashy black alternates, but the crowd was able to remember which team to cheer for, and the winning streak at the JACC was extended to 33 straight. This coming Saturday will be a test to see just how well the Irish can play at home; ND will go up against the 16th ranked Marquette Golden Eagles.

More Basketball

Because we missed out on the quote of the week segment yesterday, the Nasties crew thought it would be appropriate to direct loyal readers to an Observer article written by Fran Tolan about the Lephrechaun Legion's taunting of Ray Hall last night.

"He was just throwing up bricks," Irish forward Zach Hillesland said. "The fans were great to keep calling out that 'Airball' chant during stoppages of play for minutes on end. That really helped us out."

Irish Tame Wildcats

I couldn't tell if it was inserting Hillesland in the starting lineup or if Brey put something in the water, but the Irish for the first time this season were able to establish a commanding rhythm on the road, shooting 50% from the floor and 43% from beyond the arc while taking down Villanova in the Wachovia Center.
The game started off fairly sloppily; Nova players especially seemed to have trouble handling the ball as they threw it away several times in the first half, and the Irish capitalized, jumping out to a quick lead that they held for almost the entire contest. K-Mac (30 pts) was soaking wet, at times pulling up 2 feet outside of the NBA 3-point line to stroke down 3's, and it seemed like all of Harangody's (25 pts 10 boards) points came from converting his own 3-point plays.

Mike Brey decided to start Zach Hillesland instead of Ryan Ayers, and it brought out the best in both of them. Ayers had 10 points and 5 rebounds; Hillesland only had 2 points, but they came on a fantastic putback dunk. Peoples also contributed, adding 2 points and playing some good defense. Brey finally got Nash into a Big East game, but it was only for 3 seconds at the end of the first half.

As the game winded down to the last 3 minutes and the Irish began to run the clock, things began to get sloppy, and Notre Dame surrendered some easy points and had some ugly turnovers that shouldn't have happened. However, the bottom line is that previously 18th ranked Villanova was handed its second Big East loss of the week while ND moved to 4-2 in conference play, putting them in a tie for second place.

Hat's off to the Irish, and hopefully they can continue to have good sex in the Big East.

Video compliments of withleather.com